Locked doors at City Hall shuts out public

Irecently attended a Santa Fe City Council meeting. I wanted to speak in favor of a proposed ordinance aimed at clearing shopping carts from Santa Fe streets.

I am not normally superstitious. But perhaps I should have known better than to attend a City Council meeting on July 13. Attending a council meeting is not easy. I do not have a car. I had to take a 35-minute bus ride from south Santa Fe.

When I arrived at City Hall, a few minutes before the meeting start time, the building doors were locked. I noticed a sign on the door indicating the public could attend the meeting in person or via Zoom. I waited a moment, then tried the doors again. Still locked. A moment later, someone inside noticed me and unlocked the doors.

To my surprise, there was no public comment period at the beginning of the meeting. After a few minutes, I left the council chambers. In the hallway, I asked a man where I could find the agenda. I thought the agenda might offer clues about when the public could speak. He directed me to a rack just inside the council chamber doors, but I found no agenda there.

I gave up. Outside the building, I thought it might be a good idea to use the restroom before heading home. However, I found the City Hall doors locked once again. There was nobody around to unlock them for me.

Locked building doors during a public meeting are a violation of New Mexico’s open meeting law. The Attorney General’s Office describes the purpose of the law, which is similar to laws in other states: “Sunshine laws generally require that public business be conducted in full public view, that the action of public bodies be taken openly, and that the deliberations of public bodies be open to the public.”

While the sign on the building door indicated the public could attend the meeting in person or via Zoom, the city web pages that I have found make no mention of the public attending in person. They only mention online viewing options. However, not everyone in Santa Fe is able or willing to view or participate in an online meeting.

When I got home, one of the first things I did was to file a complaint with the state Attorney General’s Office. The office has an online complaint form, with a section dedicated to violations of the state’s open meeting law. I hope the attorney general will investigate my complaint.

The Santa Fe City Council seems to be trying to discourage public participation. Why else would the meeting start at 5 p.m., when many people are just getting off work? I dug around on the city’s website, eventually finding the meeting agenda. Public comments were agenda item No. 17, after several presentations and the executive session. This likely would be hours into the meeting.

During the Civil War, after the Battle of Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln concluded his Gettysburg address: “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation … shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

This City Council seems determined to make sure the “government of the people, by the people and for the people” perishes from Santa Fe. No wonder there were only a handful of people in attendance at the meeting. You can be sure I won’t be wasting my time going to a council meeting again.